Thanksgiving with the Coast Guard commandant

In a post for its official blog, U.S. Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Paul Zukunft lays out the reasons to be thankful for the service he oversees.

“As families, friends and loved ones join together to give thanks, my wife Fran and I are honored to share this Thanksgiving tradition with deployed service members,” he wrote. “Nearly 400 years after the first Thanksgiving, we give thanks for the blessings of liberty and freedom bestowed by those who served and continue to serve our great nation.

“Many may not know all the Coast Guard is and does,” he continued. “They may only hear about us when major disasters strike. But what our men and women do, day in and day out, has an impact on citizens every single day.”

Zukunft then summarizes the Coast Guard’s operations for the past year.

“To the south ... Coast Guard assets seized more than 200 metric tons of cocaine from the transnational criminal organizations that spread these deadly toxins to our communities,” he noted. “I was on the dock this fall as a National Security Cutter’s crew performed a drug offload, the culmination of a whole-of-government approach to combating illicit organizations that wreak havoc in our hemisphere. At the offload, I saw firsthand the dedication these crews, and the intelligence and support teams that back them, have toward this mission. We give them our thanks.”

The opinions expressed by bloggers are not necessarily shared by the Grand Haven Tribune or its employees. They are the sole opinion of the bloggers, who are not employed by or compensated by the Tribune.